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1232 Spring
We left our group at the massive tower in the middle of the ocean. The group had just woken up and saw drawn in the dust on the wall of the dinning hall the single word "Leave" written in Latin. The group decided to leave the tower because they didn't want to risk angering a wizard. However, they had to leave in a hurry because another storm was swiftly coming towards the tower. The group was able to leave but the storm quickly caught up with them. Lucca was able to cast a Perdo Auram spell that weakened the storm and the group returned to the tower to pick up the supplies they had to leave behind in their haste. As they were putting the boxes back onto the boat a large stone block was thrown off the side of the tower and nearly hit the group. Cosett- the dire wolf familiar was able to spot something up on the third floor moving around, before another stone was hurled at the group. This stone also missed the group and the group decided to leave the tower for good and head to the Carthagian ruins outside of Tunis. They were able to reach Carthage without any trouble and quickly got to work moving away the sand so they could go down into the ruins towards the abandoned redcap camp. This camp was searching the ruins because there were murals that depeicted roman armies defeating veiled armies with magic. At the camp they started moving the rubble away from the inky black opening. As they were moving the rubble, they rolled really well on awareness and saw the the rubble had carvings on them. They began to put the pieces of rubble in order and found that the rubble was in fact a broken archway that had depictions of Mercury bestowing a Laurel crown to a Roman general. There was an inscription below it that said "By the glory of Mercury, may Agustus reign forever!" Lucca realized that this archway might be an ancient Mercurian portal, and if the archway was restored the portal might be activated again. The archway was too badly broken to simply be pieced back together and would have to be remade for it to work. The group rolled very well on an intelligence+magic theory roll and realized that so long as the archway was a perfect copy of the images on the archway it didn't matter what the archway was made out of. So Paolo, spontanously cast a creo corpus spell for sun duration to make a copy of the archwayin the inky black portal. After he successfully cast the spell the inky black portal tuend a soft gray color and those with second sight were able to see that the archway was connected to a long tunnel. The group decided to walk down the tunnel and with the help of second sight was able to pass through the regio boundry into what looked like an very old roman town. Many of the buildings were damaged either by fire, storms or water damage. As the group went deeper in the city they found the central square. The town square had a large temple, a basilica, a set of Roman baths, an open forum, and a few undamaged Domus (town houses). They searched the temple and found that there was a statue in the center. The statue was of Mercury, but the head of the statue was gone. Also there was no rubble around the statue, so it seems whoever decapitated the statue took the head with them. Inside the basilica, they found a series of rooms, they were only able to do a quick search, because they had only sun duration before the archway would disappear. One of the rooms was a ransacked library. Paolo started going through the remaining papers and scrolls, but because of the time limit he was only able to piece together a set of papers that were an ancient Mercurian Lab text (the title of this lab text was "The Consecration of the House of Mercury". The group went back through the archway to the redcap camp. They talked about how to make a more permanent solution for the archway, and it was decided that Alessandro would make a lesser enchanted device of Creo Terram with concentration duration, and the device would maintain the concnetration. That way it would create the archway, but it could be removed for security when we werent there. The group flew back to Punta Rossa and spent the spring of 1232 in Punta Rossa so Alessandro could make the archway device. During the summer of 1232 the group flew back to Carthage and using the enchanted device made a stable archway so they could search the Roman town more fully. In the basilica they were able to find a number of Mercurian ritual Lab texts. Some of which are incredible finds that will either make the covenant's reputation among the greatest finds since the creation of the Aegis of the Hearth, or will have just painted the largest bullseye on our backs. ( Some of the rituals: a ritual that wipes away decrepitude points, a ritual that can create a new passageway through a regio, and even a ritual that can bestow the target with the Gift!) I will put all the information about the lab texts and other documents they were able to find in another post. We ended the summer of 1232 with the group continuing to search the town.